This is a guest post by Elena Larina, a jewellery artist working in the tatting technique. You can find her first guest post here.------------------

Hello all! My name is Elena. In this post I am going to share a story about how a simple custom order has given a birth to a new necklace design and has helped me to come up with a few ideas that I would probably make later this year.

A customer has found me in October and asked me to make her the earrings just like those that I had in my web-site. She only hoped I could use brown or orange stones instead of the green stones that I had in the earrings originally. That surprised me as the original stones were brown (tiger's eye)! It was not what she saw on her screen!

She decided to go for the corals. The lace was going to be gray with the black seed beads. I ordered the coral beads that I needed to complete the order, then sketched four lace patterns while we were waiting for the beads:

My customer took part in the creative process and sketched her own pattern:

So, I chose my customer's pattern to follow. This is what I have made for her:

The pendant (that my customer sketched) is on the left

She ended up not liking that pendant. I've made a pendant that was the exact copy of the earrings. I wove a lace chain that she was not excited about.

So I wove another chain with the beads in between the elements. (Did I mention that the lace chains could not be un-done?) Finally she liked everything. Here is the jewelry set that she has approved:

I had that extra pendant and the lace chain. I also had a few extra coral beads. What did I need to do with them? I wove two more "earrings" to sew them together with the pendant:

Then I attached the chain... Here is a new necklace!

What an awesome every-day necklace! The central element was designed by my customer, so I gave her name to the necklace. She was my co-author!

I also have gotten four patterns that I can use in my future creations! I still might modify them, though...